EX 


JOHN  WESLEY'S 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


John  Wesley's  Place 
in  History 


By 

WOODROW  WILSON 

President  of  the  United  States 


THE    ABINGDON    PRESS 
NEW  YORK          CINCINNATI 


AN  ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  AT  WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY 

ON  THE  OCCASION  OF  THE 

WESLEY  BICENTENNIAL 


JOHN    WESLEY'S    PLACE 
IN  HISTORY 

JOHN  WESLEY  lived  and  wrought 
while  the  Georges  reigned.  He 
was  born  but  a  year  after  Anne  be- 
came queen,  a  year  before  the  battle 
of  Blenheim  was  fought;  while  England 
was  still  caught  in  the  toils  of  the 
wars  into  which  her  great  constitu- 
tional revolution  had  drawn  her;  when 
Marlborough  was  in  the  field,  and  the 
armies  afoot  which  were  to  make  the 
ancient  realm  free  to  go  her  own  way 
without  dictation  from  any  prince  in 
Europe.  But  when  he  came  to  man- 
hood, and  to  the  days  in  which  his 
work  was  to  begin,  all  things  had 
fallen  quiet  again.  Wars  were  over 


2047007 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

and  the  pipes  of  peace  breathed  sooth- 
ing strains.  The  day  of  change  had 
passed  and  gone,  and  bluff  Sir  Robert 
Walpole  ruled  the  land,  holding  it 
quiet,  aloof  from  excitement,  to  the 
steady  humdrum  course  of  business,  in 
which  questions  of  the  treasury  and 
of  the  routine  of  administration  were 
talked  about,  not  questions  of  con- 
stitutional right  or  any  matter  of 
deep  conviction.  The  first  of  the 
dull  Georges  had  come  suitably  into 
the  play  at  the  center  of  the  slow 
plot,  bringing  with  him  the  vulgar 
airs  of  the  provincial  court  of  obscure 
Hanover,  and  views  that  put  states- 
manship out  of  the  question. 

The  real  eighteenth  century  had  set 
in,  whose  annals  even  its  own  his- 
torians have  pronounced  to  be  tedious, 
unheroic,  without  noble  or  moving 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

plot,  though  they  would  fain  make 
what  they  can  of  the  story.  They 
have  found  it  dull  because  it  lacked 
dramatic  unity.  Its  wars  were  fought 
for  mere  political  advantage — because 
politicians  had  intrigued  and  thrones 
fallen  vacant;  for  the  adjustment  of 
the  balance  of  power  or  the  aggran- 
dizement of  dynasties;  and  represented 
neither  the  growth  of  empires  nor  the 
progress  of  political  ideals.  All  re- 
ligion, they  say,  had  cooled  and 
philanthropy  had  not  been  born.  The 
thinkers  of  the  day  had  as  little 
elevation  of  thought  as  the  statesmen, 
the  preachers  as  little  ardor  as  the 
atheistical  wits,  whose  unbelief  they 
scarcely  troubled  themselves  to  chal- 
lenge. The  poor  were  unspeakably 
degraded  and  the  rich  had  flung  morals 

to    the    winds.      There    was    no    ad- 
5 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

venture   of   mind    or   conscience   that 
seemed  worth  risking  a  fall  for. 

But  the  historians  who  paint  this 
somber  picture  look  too  little  upon 
individuals,  upon  details,  upon  the 
life  that  plays  outside  the  field  of 
politics  and  of  philosophical  thinking. 
They  are  in  search  of  policies,  move- 
ments, great  and  serious  combinations 
of  men,  events  that  alter  the  course 
of  history,  or  letters  that  cry  a  chal- 
lenge to  the  spirits.  Forget  statecraft, 
forego  seeking  the  materials  for  sys- 
tematic narrative,  and  look  upon  the 
eighteenth  century  as  you  would  look 
upon  your  own  day,  as  a  period  of 
human  life  whose  details  are  its  real 
substance,  and  you  will  find  enough 
and  to  spare  of  human  interest.  The 
literary  annals  of  a  time,  when  Swift 
and  Addison  and  Berkeley  and  Butler 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

and  Pope  and  Gray  and  Defoe  and 
Richardson  and  Fielding  and  Smollett 
and  Sterne  and  Samuel  Johnson  and 
Goldsmith  and  Burke  and  Hume  and 
Gibbon  and  Cowper  and  Burns  wrote, 
and  in  which  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
Byron,  Shelley,  and  Keats  were  born, 
cannot  be  called  barren  or  without 
spiritual  significance. 

No  doubt  the  wits  of  Queen  Anne's 
time  courted  a  muse  too  prim,  too 
precise,  too  much  without  passion  to 
seem  to  us  worthy  to  stand  with  the 
great  spirit  of  letters  that  speaks  in 
the  noble  poetry  with  which  the  next 
century  was  ushered  in;  but  there  was 
here  a  very  sweet  relief  from  the 
ungoverned  passions  of  the  Restora- 
tion, the  licentious  force  of  men  who 
knew  the  restraints  neither  of  purity 

nor  of  taste;  and  he  must  need  strong 

7 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

spices  in  his  food  who  finds  Swift 
insipid.  No  doubt  Fielding  is  coarse, 
and  Richardson  prolix  and  sentimental, 
Sterne  prurient  and  without  true  tonic 
for  the  mind,  but  the  world  which 
these  men  uncovered  will  always  stand 
real  and  vivid  before  our  eyes.  It 
is  a  crowded  and  lively  stage  with 
living  persons  upon  it;  the  eighteenth 
century  can  never  seem  a  time  vague 
and  distant  after  we  have  read  those 
pages  of  intimate  revelation.  No  doubt 
Dr.  Johnson  failed  to  speak  any  vital 
philosophy  of  life  and  uttered  only 
common  sense,  and  the  talk  at  the 
Turk's  Head  Tavern  ran  upon  pre- 
serving the  English  Constitution  rather 
than  upon  improving  it;  but  it  is 
noteworthy  that  Mr.  Goldsmith,  who 
was  of  that  company,  was  born  of 

the  same  century  that  produced  Lau- 

8 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

rence  Sterne,  and  that  "She  Stoops 
to  Conquer"  and  the  "Vicar  of  Wake- 
field,"  with  their  sweet  savor  of  purity 
and  modesty  and  grace,  no  less  than 
"Tristram  Shandy"  and  "Tom  Jones," 
with  their  pungent  odor,  blossomed  in 
the  unweeded  garden  of  that  careless 
age.  Burns  sang  with  clear  throat 
and  an  unschooled  rapture  at  the 
North,  and  the  bards  were  born  who 
were  to  bring  the  next  age  in  with 
strains  that  rule  our  spirits  still. 

A  deep  pulse  beat  in  that  unevent- 
ful century.  All  things  were  making 
ready  for  a  great  change.  When  the 
century  began  it  was  the  morrow  of 
a  great  struggle,  from  whose  passionate 
endeavors  men  rested  with  a  certain 
lassitude,  with  a  great  weariness  and 
longing  for  peace.  The  travail  of  the 

civil   wars   had   not   ended   with    the 
9 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

mastery  of  Cromwell,  the  Restoration 
of  Charles,  and  the  ousting  of  James; 
it  had  ended  only  with  the  constitu- 
tional revolution  which  followed  1688, 
and  with  the  triumphs  of  the  Prince 
of  Orange.  It  had  been  compounded 
of  every  element  that  can  excite  or 
subdue  the  spirits  of  men.  Questions 
of  politics  had  sprung  out  of  ques- 
tions of  religion,  and  men  had  found 
their  souls  staked  upon  the  issue. 
The  wits  of  the  Restoration  tried  to 
laugh  the  ardor  off,  but  it  burned 
persistent  until  its  work  was  done 
and  the  liberties  of  England  spread 
to  every  field  of  thought  or  action. 

No  wonder  the  days  of  Queen  Anne 
seemed  dull  and  thoughtless  after 
such  an  age;  and  yet  no  wonder  there 
was  a  sharp  reaction.  No  wonder 

questions    of    religion    were    avoided, 
10 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

minor  questions  of  reform  postponed. 
No  wonder  Sir  Robert  sought  to  cool 
the  body  politic  and  calm  men's  minds 
for  business.  But  other  forces  were 
gathering  head  as  hot  as  those  which 
had  but  just  subsided.  This  long  age 
of  apparent  reaction  was  in  fact  an 
age  of  preparation  also;  was  not  merely 
the  morrow  of  one  revolution,  but 
was  also  the  eve  of  another,  more 
tremendous  still,  which  was  to  shake 
the  whole  fabric  of  society.  England 
had  no  direct  part  in  bringing  the 
French  Revolution  on,  but  she  drank 
with  the  rest  of  the  wine  of  the  age 
which  produced  it,  and  before  it  came 
had  had  her  own  rude  awakening  in 
the  revolt  of  her  American  colonies. 

Great    industrial    changes    were    in 
progress,  too.     This  century,  so  dull 

to  the  political  historian,  was  the  cen- 
11 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTOKY 

tury  in  which  the  world  of  our  own 
day  was  born,  the  century  of  that 
industrial  revolution  which  made  po- 
litical ambition  thenceforth  an  instru- 
ment of  material  achievement,  of 
commerce  and  manufacture.  These 
were  the  days  in  which  canals  began 
to  be  built  in  England,  to  open  her 
inland  markets  to  the  world  and 
shorten  and  multiply  her  routes  of 
trade;  when  the  spinning  jenny  was 
invented  and  the  steam  engine  and 
the  spinning  machine  and  the  weaver's 
mule;  when  cities  which  had  slept 
since  the  middle  ages  waked  of  a 
sudden  to  new  life  and  new  cities 
sprang  up  where  only  hamlets  had 
been.  Peasants  crowded  into  the  towns 
for  work;  the  countrysides  saw  their 
life  upset,  unsettled;  idlers  thronged 

the  highways  and  the  marts,  their  old 
12 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTOKY 

life  at  the  plow  or  in  the  village  given 
up,  no  settled  new  life  found;  there 
were  not  police  enough  to  check  or 
hinder  vagrancy,  and  sturdy  beggars 
were  all  too  ready  to  turn  their  hands 
to  crime  and  riot.  The  old  order  was 
breaking  up,  and  men  did  not  readily 
find  their  places  in  the  new. 

The  new  age  found  its  philosophy 
in  Adam  Smith's  "Wealth  of  Nations," 
the  philosophy  of  self-interest,  and 
men  thought  too  constantly  upon  these 
things  to  think  deeply  on  any  others. 
An  industrial  age,  an  age  of  indus- 
trial beginnings,  offers  new  adventures 
to  the  mind,  and  men  turn  their 
energies  into  the  channels  of  material 
power.  It  is  no  time  for  speculations 
concerning  another  world;  the  imme- 
diate task  is  to  fill  this  world  with 

wealth  and  fortune  and  all  the  enginery 
13 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

of  material  success.  It  is  no  time 
to  regard  men  as  living  souls;  they 
must  be  thought  of  rather  as  tools, 
as  workmen,  as  producers  of  wealth, 
the  builders  of  industry,  and  the  cap- 
tains of  soldiers  of  fortune.  Men  must 
talk  of  fiscal  problems,  of  the  laws 
of  commerce,  of  the  raw  materials 
and  the  processes  of  manufacture,  of 
the  facilitation  of  exchange.  Politics 
centers  in  the  budget,  and  the  freedom 
men  think  of  is  rather  the  freedom  of 
the  market  than  the  freedom  of  the 
hustings  or  of  the  voting  booth. 

And  yet  there  are  here  great  energies 
let  loose  which  have  not  wrought  their 
full  effect  upon  the  minds  of  men  in 
the  mere  doing  of  their  daily  tasks 
or  the  mere  planning  of  their  fortunes. 
Men  must  think  and  long  as  well  as 

toil;  the  wider  the  world  upon  which 
14 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

they  spend  themselves  the  wider  the 
sweep  of  their  thoughts,  the  restless, 
unceasing  excursions  of  their  hope. 
The  mind  of  England  did  not  lie 
quiet  through  those  unquiet  days.  All 
things  were  making  and  to  be  made, 
new  thoughts  of  life  as  well  as  new 
ways  of  living.  Masters  and  laborers 
alike  were  sharing  in  the  new  birth 
of  society.  And  in  the  midst  of  these 
scenes,  this  shifting  of  the  forces  of 
the  world,  this  passing  of  old  things 
and  birth  of  new,  stood  John  Wesley, 
the  child,  the  contemporary,  the  spir- 
itual protagonist  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Born  before  Blenheim  had 
been  fought,  he  lived  until  the  fires 
of  the  French  Revolution  were  ablaze. 
He  was  as  much  the  child  of  his  age 
as  Bolingbroke  was,  or  Robert  Burns. 

We  ought  long  ago  to  have  perceived 
15 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

that  no  century  yields  a  single  type. 
There  are  countrysides  the  land  over 
which  know  nothing  of  London  town. 
The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  rules  his  parish 
as  no  rollicking,  free-thinking  fellow 
can  who  sups  with  Laurence  Sterne. 
Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  is  as  truly  a 
gentleman  of  his  age  as  Squire  Western. 
Quiet  homes  breed  their  own  sons. 
The  Scots  country  at  the  North  has 
its  own  free  race  of  poets  and  think- 
ers, men,  some  of  them,  as  stern  as 
puritans  in  the  midst  of  the  loose 
age.  Many  a  quiet  village  church  in 
England  hears  preaching  which  has  no 
likeness  at  all  to  the  cool  rationalistic 
discourse  of  vicars  and  curates  whom 
the  spiritual  blight  of  the  age  has 
touched,  and  witnesses  in  its  vicarage 
a  life  as  simple,  as  grave,  as  elevated 

above  the  vain  pursuits  of  the  world 
16 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

as  any  household  of  puritan  days  had 
seen.  England  was  steadied  in  that 
day,  as  always,  by  her  great  pervasive 
middle  class,  whose  affections  did  not 
veer  amidst  the  heady  gusts  even  of 
that  time  of  change,  when  the  world 
was  in  transformation;  whose  life  held 
to  the  same  standards,  whose  thoughts 
traveled  old  accustomed  ways.  The 
indifference  of  the  church  did  not 
destroy  their  religion.  They  did  not 
lose  their  prepossessions  for  the  orderly 
manners  and  morals  that  kept  life  pure. 
It  was  no  anomaly,  therefore,  that 
the  son  of  Samuel  and  Susanna  Wesley 
should  come  from  the  Epworth  rectory 
to  preach  forth  righteousness  and  judg- 
ment to  come  to  the  men  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  Epworth,  in  quiet 
Lincolnshire,  was  typical  English  land 

and  lay  remote  from  the  follies  and 
17 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

fashions  of  the  age.  There  was  sober 
thinking  and  plain  living — there  where 
low  monotonous  levels  ran  flat  to  the 
spreading  Humber  and  the  coasts  of 
the  sea.  The  children  of  that  vicarage, 
swarming  a  little  host  about  its  hearth, 
were  bred  in  love  and  fear,  love  of 
rectitude  and  fear  of  sin,  their  imagina- 
tion filled  with  the  ancient  sanctions  of 
the  religion  of  the  prophets  and  the 
martyrs,  their  lives  drilled  to  right 
action  and  the  studious  service  of  God. 
Some  things  in  the  intercourse  and 
discipline  of  that  household  strike  us 
with  a  sort  of  awe,  some  with  repul- 
sion. Those  children  lived  too  much 
in  the  presence  of  things  unseen;  the 
inflexible  consciences  of  the  parents 
who  ruled  them  brought  them  under 
a  rigid  discipline  which  disturbed  their 

spirits  as  much  as  it  enlightened  them. 
18 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTOKY 

But,  though  gaiety  and  lightness  of 
heart  were  there  shut  out,  love  was 
not,  nor  sweetness.  No  one  can  read 
Susanna  Wesley's  rules  for  the  instruc- 
tion and  development  of  her  children 
without  seeing  the  tender  heart  of 
the  true  woman,  whose  children  were 
the  light  of  her  eyes.  This  mother 
was  a  true  counsellor  and  her  children 
resorted  to  her  as  to  a  sort  of  prov- 
idence, feeling  safe  when  she  approved. 
For  the  stronger  spirits  among  them 
the  regime  of  that  household  was  a 
keen  and  wholesome  tonic. 

And  John  Wesley  was  certainly  one 
of  the  stronger  spirits.  He  came  out 
of  the  hands  of  his  mother  with  the 
temper  of  a  piece  of  fine  steel.  All 
that  was  executive  and  fit  for  mastery 
in  the  discipline  of  belief  seemed  to 

come  to  perfection  in  him.     He  dealt 
19 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

with  the  spirits  of  other  men  with 
the  unerring  capacity  of  a  man  of 
affairs — a  sort  of  spiritual  statesman, 
a  politician  of  God,  speaking  the  policy 
of  a  kingdom  unseen,  but  real  and 
destined  to  prevail  over  all  king- 
doms else. 

He  did  not  deem  himself  a  re- 
former; he  deemed  himself  merely  a 
minister  and  servant  of  the  church 
and  the  faith  in  which  he  had  been 
bred,  and  meant  that  no  man  should 
avoid  him  upon  his  errand  though  it 
were  necessary  to  search  the  by-ways 
and  beat  the  hedges  to  find  those 
whom  he  sought.  He  did  not  spring 
to  his  mission  like  a  man  who  had 
seen  a  vision  and  conceived  the  plan 
of  his  life  beforehand,  whole,  and  with 
its  goal  marked  upon  it  as  upon  a 

map.     He  learned  what  it  was  to  be 
20 


from  day  to  day,  as  other  men  do. 
He  did  not  halt  or  hesitate,  not  be- 
cause his  vision  went  forward  to  the 
end,  but  because  his  will  was  sound, 
unfailing,  sure  of  its  immediate  pur- 
pose. His  "Journal"  is  as  notable  a 
record  of  common  sense  and  sound 
practical  judgment  as  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin's "Autobiography"  or  the  letters  of 
Washington.  It  is  his  clear  knowledge 
of  his  duty  and  mission  from  day  to 
day  that  is  remarkable,  and  the  effi- 
ciency with  which  he  moved  from 
purpose  to  purpose.  It  was  a  very 
simple  thing  that  he  did,  taking  it 
in  its  main  outlines  and  conceptions. 
Conceiving  religion  vitally,  as  it  had 
been  conceived  in  his  own  home, 
he  preached  it  with  a  vigor,  an 
explicitness,  a  directness  of  phrase 

and  particularity  of  application  which 
21 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTOKY 

shocked  the  sober  decorum  of  his 
fellow  ministers  of  the  church  so  much 
that  he  was  more  and  more  shut  out 
from  their  pulpits.  He  got  no  church 
of  his  own;  probably  no  single  parish 
would  have  satisfied  his  ardor  had  a 
living  been  found  for  him.  He  would 
not  sit  still.  The  conviction  of  the 
truth  was  upon  him;  he  was  a  messen- 
ger of  God,  and  if  he  could  not  preach 
in  the  churches,  where  it  seemed  to 
him  the  duty  of  every  man  who  loved 
the  order  and  dignity  of  divine  service 
to  stand  if  he  would  deliver  the  word 
of  God,  he  must,  as  God's  man  of 
affairs,  stand  in  the  fields  as  Mr. 
Whitefield  did  and  proclaim  it  to  all 
who  could  come  within  the  sound  of 
his  voice. 

And  so  he  made  the  whole  kingdom 

his  parish,  took  horse  like  a  courier 
22 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTOEY 

and  carried  his  news  along  every  high- 
way. Slowly,  with  no  premeditated 
plan,  going  now  here,  now  there,  as 
some  call  of  counsel  or  opportunity 
directed  him,  he  moved  as  if  from  stage 
to  stage  of  a  journey;  and  as  he  went 
did  his  errand  as  if  instinctively.  No 
stranger  at  an  inn,  no  traveler  met 
upon  the  road  left  him  without  hear- 
ing of  his  business.  Those  he  could 
not  come  to  a  natural  parley  with  he 
waylaid.  The  language  of  his  "Jour- 
nal" is  sometimes  almost  that  of  the 
highwayman.  "At  Gerard's  Cross,"  he 
says,  "I  plainly  declared  to  those  whom 
God  gave  into  my  hands  the  faith  as 
it  is  in  Jesus:  as  I  did  the  next  day 
to  a  young  man  I  overtook  on  the 
road."  The  sober  passion  of  the  task 
grew  upon  him  as  it  unfolded  itself 

under  his  hand  from  month  to  month, 
23 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

from  year  to  year.  He  was  more  and 
more  upon  the  highways;  his  journeys 
lengthened,  carried  him  into  regions 
where  preachers  had  never  gone  be- 
fore, to  the  collieries,  to  the  tin  mines, 
to  the  fishing  villages  of  the  coast, 
and  made  him  familiar  with  every 
countryside  of  the  kingdom,  his  slight 
and  sturdy  figure  and  shrewd,  kind 
face  known  everywhere.  It  was  not 
long  before  he  was  in  the  saddle  from 
year's  end  to  year's  end,  always  going 
forward  as  if  upon  an  enterprise,  but 
never  hurried,  always  ready  to  stop 
and  talk  upon  the  one  thing  that 
absorbed  him,  making  conversation  and 
discourse  his  business,  seizing  upon  a 
handful  of  listeners  no  less  eagerly 
than  upon  a  multitude. 

The  news  got  carried  abroad  as  he 

traveled  that  he  was  coming,  and  he 
24 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

was  expected  with  a  sort  of  excite- 
ment. Some  feared  him.  His  kind 
had  never  been  known  in  England 
since  the  wandering  friars  of  the  mid- 
dle ages  fell  quiet  and  were  gone. 
And  no  friar  had  ever  spoken  as  this 
man  spoke.  He  was  not  like  Mr. 
Whitefield;  his  errand  seemed  hardly 
the  same.  Mr.  Whitefield  swayed  men 
with  a  power  known  time  out  of 
mind,  the  power  of  the  consummate 
orator  whose  words  possess  the  mind 
and  rule  the  spirit  while  he  speaks. 
There  was  no  magic  of  oratory  in 
Mr.  Wesley's  tone  or  presence.  There 
was  something  more  singular,  more  in- 
timate, more  searching.  He  com- 
manded so  quietly,  wore  so  subtle 
an  air  of  gentle  majesty,  attached 
men  to  himself  so  like  a  party  leader, 

whose  coming  draws  together  a  com- 
25 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

pany  of  partisans,  and  whose  going 
leaves  an  organized  band  of  adherents, 
that  cautious  men  were  uneasy  and 
suspicious  concerning  him.  He  seemed 
a  sort  of  revolutionist,  left  no  com- 
munity as  he  found  it,  set  men  by 
the  ears.  It  was  hard  to  believe  that 
he  had  no  covert  errand,  that  he 
meant  nothing  more  than  to  preach 
the  peaceable  riches  of  Christ.  "The 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because 
he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  the 
gospel  to  the  poor;  he  hath  sent  me 
to  heal  the  broken-hearted;  to  preach 
deliverance  to  the  captives,  and  re- 
covery of  sight  to  the  blind;  to  set  at 
liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to  pro- 
claim the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord" 
—this  had  been  the  text  from  which 
he  preached  his  first  sermon  by  the 

highway,  standing  upon  a  little  emi- 
26 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

nence  just  outside  the  town  of  Bristol. 
It  described  his  mission — but  not  to 
his  enemies.  The  churches  had  been 
shut  against  him,  not  because  he 
preached,  but  because  he  preached  with 
so  disturbing  a  force  and  directness, 
as  if  he  had  come  to  take  the  peace 
of  the  church  away  and  stir  men  to  a 
great  spiritual  revolution;  and  uneasy 
questionings  arose  about  him.  Why 
was  he  so  busy?  Why  did  he  confer 
so  often  with  an  intimate  group  of 
friends,  as  if  upon  some  deep  plan, 
appoint  rendezvous  with  them,  and 
seem  to  know  always  which  way  he 
must  turn  next,  and  when?  Why  was 
he  so  restless,  so  indomitably  eager 
to  make  the  next  move  in  his  mysteri- 
ous journey?  Why  did  he  push  on 
through  any  weather  and  look  to  his 

mount  like  a   trooper   on  campaign? 

27 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

Did  he  mean  to  upset  the  country? 
Men  had  seen  the  government  of 
England  disturbed  before  that  by  fa- 
natics who  talked  only  of  religion  and 
of  judgment  to  come.  The  Puritan  and 
the  Roundhead  had  been  men  of  this 
kind,  and  the  Scottish  Covenanters. 
Was  it  not  possible  that  John  Wesley 
was  the  emissary  of  a  party  or  of 
some  pretender,  or  even  of  the  sinister 
Church  of  Rome? 

He  lived  such  calumnies  down.  No 
mobs  dogged  his  steps  after  men  had 
once  come  to  know  him  and  perceived 
the  real  quality  he  was  of.  Indeed, 
from  the  very  first  men  had  surrendered 
their  suspicions  upon  sight  of  him. 
It  was  impossible,  it  would  seem,  not 
to  trust  him  when  once  you  had  looked 
into  his  calm  gray  eyes.  He  was  so 

friendly,  so  simple,  so  open,  so  ready 

28 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

to  meet  your  challenge  with  temperate 
and  reasonable  reply,  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  deem  him  subtle,  politic, 
covert,  a  man  to  preach  one  thing  and 
plan  another.  There  was  something, 
too,  in  his  speech  and  in  the  way  he 
bore  himself  which  discovered  the  heart 
of  every  man  he  dealt  with.  Men 
would  raise  their  hands  to  strike  him 
in  the  mob  and,  having  caught  the 
look  in  his  still  eye,  bring  them  down 
to  stroke  his  hair.  Something  issued 
forth  from  him  which  penetrated  and 
subdued  them — some  suggestion  of  pur- 
ity, some  intimation  of  love,  some  sign 
of  innocence  and  nobility — some  power 
at  once  of  rebuke  and  attraction  which 
he  must  have  caught  from  his  Master. 
And  so  there  came  a  day  Vhen  prej- 
udice stood  abashed  before  him,  and 

men  everywhere  hailed  his  coming  as 
29 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

the  coming  of  a  friend  and  pastor. 
He  became  not  only  the  best  known 
man  in  the  kingdom — that  of  course, 
because  he  went  everywhere — but  also 
the  best  loved  and  the  most  wel- 
come. 

And  yet  the  first  judgment  of  him 
had  not  been  wholly  wrong.  A  sort 
of  revolution  followed  him,  after  all. 
It  was  not  merely  that  he  came  and 
went  so  constantly  and  moved  every 
countryside  with  his  preaching.  Some- 
thing remained  after  he  was  gone:  the 
touch  of  the  statesman  men  had  at 
first  taken  him  to  be.  He  was  a  min- 
ister of  the  Church  of  England.  He 
loved  her  practices  and  had  not  will- 
ingly broken  with  them.  It  had  been 
with  the  keenest  reluctance  that  he 
consented  to  preach  in  the  fields,  out- 
side the  sacred  precincts  of  a  church, 
30 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

"having  been  all  my  life,"  as  he  said, 
"so  tenacious  of  every  point  relating 
to  decency  and  order  that  I  should 
have  thought  the  saving  of  souls  al- 
most a  sin  if  it  had  not  been  done  in 
a  church."  He  never  broke  with  the 
communion  he  loved.  But  his  work  in 
the  wide  parish  of  a  whole  kingdom 
could  not  be  done  alone,  and  not 
many  men  bred  to  the  orders  of  the 
church  could  be  found  to  assist  him; 
he  was  forced  by  sheer  drift  of  cir- 
cumstances to  establish  a  sort  of  lay 
society,  a  sort  of  salvation  army,  to 
till  the  fields  he  had  plowed.  He  was 
a  born  leader  of  men.  The  conferences 
he  held  with  the  friends  he  loved  and 
trusted  were  councils  of  campaign,  and 
did  hold  long  plans  in  view,  as  his 
enemies  suspected.  They  have  a  high 

and  honorable  place  in  the  history  of 
31 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

the  statesmanship  of  salvation.  It  was 
a  chief  part  of  Wesley's  singular  power 
that  everything  he  touched  took  shape 
as  if  with  a  sort  of  institutional  life. 
He  was  not  so  great  a  preacher  as 
Whitefield  or  so  moving  a  poet  as  his 
brother  Charles;  men  counseled  him 
who  were  more  expert  and  profound 
theologians  than  he  and  more  subtle 
reasoners  upon  the  processes  of  salva- 
tion. But  in  him  all  things  seemed 
combined;  no  one  power  seemed  more 
excellent  than  another,  and  every  power 
expressed  itself  in  action  under  the 
certain  operation  of  his  planning  will. 
He  almost  unwittingly  left  a  church 
behind  him. 

It  is  this  statesmanship  in  the 
man  that  gives  him  precedence  in 
the  annals  of  his  day.  Men's  spirits 

were  not  dead;  they  are  never  dead; 
32 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTOKY 

but  they  sometimes  stand  confused, 
daunted,  or  amazed  as  they  did  amidst 
the  shifting  scenes  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  wait  to  be  commanded. 
This  man  commanded  them,  and  kept 
his  command  over  them,  not  only  by 
the  way  he  held  the  eye  of  the  whole 
nation  in  his  incessant  tireless  jour- 
neys, his  presence  everywhere,  his 
winning  power  of  address,  but  also  by 
setting  up  deputies,  classes,  societies, 
where  he  himself  could  not  be,  with 
their  places  of  meeting,  their  organ- 
izations and  efficient  way  of  action. 
He  was  as  practical  and  attentive  to 
details  as  a  master  of  industry,  and 
as  keen  to  keep  hold  of  the  business 
he  had  set  afoot.  It  was  a  happy 
gibe  that  dubbed  the  men  of  his  way 
Methodists.  It  was  the  method  of  his 

evangelization  that  gave  it  permanence 
33 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

and  historical  significance.  He  would 
in  any  case  have  been  a  notable  figure, 
a  moving  force  in  the  history  of  his 
age.  His  mere  preaching,  his  striking 
personality,  his  mere  presence  every- 
where in  the  story  of  the  time,  his  mere 
vagrancy  and  indomitable  charm,would 
have  drawn  every  historian  to  speak 
of  him  and  make  much  of  his  pic- 
turesque part  in  the  motley  drama  of 
the  century;  but  as  it  is  they  have 
been  constrained  to  put  him  among 
statesmen  as  well  as  in  their  catalogues 
of  saints  and  missionaries. 

History  is  inexorable  with  men  who 
isolate  themselves.  They  are  suffered 
oftentimes  to  find  a  place  in  literature, 
but  never  in  the  story  of  events  or 
in  any  serious  reckoning  of  cause  and 
effect.  They  may  be  interesting,  but 

they   are  not  important.     The  mere 
34 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

revolutionist  looks  small  enough  when 
his  day  is  passed;  the  mere  agitator 
struts  but  a  little  while  and  without 
applause  amidst  the  scenes  and  events 
which  men  remember.  It  is  the  men 
who  make  as  well  as  destroy  who 
really  serve  their  race,  and  it  is  note- 
worthy how  action  predominated  in 
Wesley  from  the  first.  The  little 
coterie  at  Oxford,  to  which  we  look 
back  as  to  the  first  associates  in  the 
movement  which  John  Wesley  dom- 
inated, were  as  fervent  in  their  prayers, 
in  their  musings  upon  the  Scripture, 
in  their  visits  to  the  poor  and  outcast, 
before  John  Wesley  joined  them  as 
afterward.  Their  zeal  had  its  roots  in 
the  divine  pity  which  must  lie  at  the 
heart  of  every  evangelistic  movement 
— pity  for  those  to  whom  the  gospel 

is   not   preached,    whom   no   light   of 
35 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

Christian  guidance  had  reached,  the 
men  in  the  jails  and  in  the  purlieus 
of  the  towns  whom  the  church  does 
not  seek  or  touch;  but  he  gave  them 
leadership  and  the  spirit  of  achieve- 
ment. His  genius  for  action  touched 
everything  he  was  associated  with; 
every  enterprise  took  from  him  an 
impulse  of  efficiency. 

Unquestionably  this  man  altered  and 
in  his  day  governed  the  spiritual  his- 
tory of  England  and  the  English- 
speaking  race  on  both  sides  of  the  sea; 
and  we  ask  what  was  ready  at  his 
hand,  what  did  he  bring  into  being 
of  the  things  he  seemed  to  create? 
The  originative  power  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  affairs  must  always  remain 
a  mystery,  a  theme  more  full  of  ques- 
tions than  of  answers.  What  would 

the  eighteenth  century  in  England  have 
36 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

produced  of  spiritual  betterment  with- 
out John  Wesley?  What  did  he  give 
it  which  it  could  not  have  got  without 
him?  These  are  questions  which  no 
man  can  answer.  But  one  thing  is 
plain:  Wesley  did  not  create  life,  he 
only  summoned  it  to  consciousness. 
The  eighteenth  century  was  not  dead; 
it  was  not  even  asleep;  it  was  only 
confused,  unorganized,  without  author- 
itative leadership  in  matters  of  faith 
and  doctrine,  uncertain  of  its  direc- 
tion. 

Wesley's  own  Journal  affords  us  an 
authentic  picture  of  the  time,  mixed, 
as  always,  of  good  and  bad.  He 
fared  well  or  ill  upon  his  journeys  as 
England  was  itself  made  up.  The 
self-government  of  England  in  that 
day  was  a  thing  uncentered  and  un- 
systematic in  a  degree  it  is  nowadays 
37 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

difficult  for  us  to  imagine.  The  coun- 
try gentlemen,  who  were  magistrates, 
ruled  as  they  pleased  in  the  country- 
sides, whether  in  matters  of  justice 
or  administration,  without  dictation  or 
suggestion  from  London;  and  yet  ruled 
rather  as  representatives  than  as  mas- 
ters. They  were  neighbors  the  year 
around  to  the  people  they  ruled;  their 
interests  were  not  divorced  from  the 
interests  of  the  rest.  Local  pride  and 
a  public  spirit  traditional  amongst  them 
held  them  generally  to  a  just  and  up- 
right course.  But  the  process  of  justice 
with  them  was  a  process  of  opinion  as 
much  as  of  law.  It  was  an  inquest 
of  the  neighborhood,  and  each  neighbor- 
hood dealt  with  visitors  and  vagrants 
as  it  would.  There  was  everywhere  the 
free  touch  of  individuality.  The  roads 

were  not  policed;  the  towns  were  not 

38 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

patrolled — good  men  and  bad  had  al- 
most equal  leave  to  live  as  they 
pleased.  If  things  went  wrong  the 
nearest  magistrate  must  be  looked  up 
at  his  home  or  stopped  in  his  carriage 
as  he  passed  along  the  highway  and 
asked  to  pass  judgment  as  chief  neigh- 
bor and  arbiter  of  the  place.  And 
so  Mr.  Wesley  dealt  with  individuals 
—it  was  the  English  way.  His  safety 
lay  in  the  love  and  admiration  he  won 
or  in  the  sense  of  fair  play  to  which 
his  frank  and  open  methods  appealed; 
his  peril,  in  the  passions  of  the  crowds 
or  of  the  individuals  who  pressed 
about  him  full  of  hatred  and  evil 
thoughts. 

The  noteworthy  thing  was  how  many 
good  men  he  found  along  these  high- 
ways where  Tom  Jones  had  traveled, 

how  many  were  glad  to  listen  to  him 
39 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

and  rejoiced  at  the  message  he  brought, 
how  many  were  just  and  thoughtful 
and  compassionate,  and  waited  for 
the  gospel  with  an  open  heart.  This 
man,  as  I  have  said,  was  no  engaging 
orator,  whom  it  would  have  been  a 
pleasure  to  hear  upon  any  theme. 
He  spoke  very  searching  words, 
sharper  than  any  two-edged  sword, 
cutting  the  conscience  to  the  quick. 
It  was  no  pastime  to  hear  him.  It 
was  the  more  singular,  therefore,  the 
more  significant,  the  more  pitiful,  how 
eagerly  he  was  sought  out,  as  if  by 
men  who  knew  their  sore  need  and 
would  fain  hear  some  word  of  help, 
though  it  were  a  word  also  of  stern 
rebuke  and  of  fearful  portent  to  those 
who  went  astray.  The  spiritual  hun- 
ger of  men  was  manifest,  their  need 

of   the   church,    their   instinct   to   be 
40 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

saved.    The  time  was  ready  and  cried 
out  for  a  spiritual  revival. 

The  church  was  dead  and  Wesley 
awakened  it;  the  poor  were  neglected 
and  Wesley  sought  them  out;  the 
gospel  was  shrunken  into  formulas  and 
Wesley  flung  it  fresh  upon  the  air 
once  more  in  the  speech  of  common 
men;  the  air  was  stagnant  and  fetid; 
he  cleared  and  purified  it  by  speaking 
always  and  everywhere  the  word  of 
God;  and  men's  spirits  responded, 
leaped  at  the  message,  and  were  made 
wholesome  as  they  comprehended  it. 
It  was  a  voice  for  which  they  had 
waited,  though  they  knew  it  not.  It 
would  not  have  been  heard  had  it 
come  untimely.  It  was  the  voice  of 
the  century's  longing  heard  in  the 
mouth  of  this  one  man  more  per- 
fectly, more  potently,  than  in  the 
41 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

mouth  of  any  other — and  this  man  a 
master  of  other  men,  a  leader  who 
left  his  hearers  wiser  than  he  found 
them  in  the  practical  means  of  salva- 
tion. 

And  so  everything  that  made  for 
the  regeneration  of  the  times  seemed 
to  link  itself  with  Methodism.  The 
great  impulse  of  humane  feeling  which 
marked  the  closing  years  of  the  cen- 
tury seemed  in  no  small  measure  to 
spring  from  it:  the  reform  of  prisons, 
the  agitation  for  the  abolition  of  slav- 
ery, the  establishment  of  missionary 
societies  and  Bible  societies,  the  intro- 
duction into  life,  and  even  into  law, 
of  pity  for  the  poor,  compassion  for 
those  who  must  suffer.  The  noble 
philanthropies  and  reforms  which 
brighten  the  annals  of  the  nineteenth 

century   had   their   spiritual   birth   in 

42 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

the  eighteenth.  Wesley  had  carried 
Christianity  to  the  masses  of  the 
people,  had  renewed  the  mission  of 
Christ  himself,  and  all  things  began 
to  take  color  from  what  he  had  done. 
Men  to  whom  Methodism  meant  noth- 
ing, yet,  in  fact,  followed  this  man 
to  whom  Methodism  owed  its  estab- 
lishment. 

No  doubt  he  played  no  small  part 
in  saving  England  from  the  madness 
which  fell  upon  France  ere  the  cen- 
tury ended.  The  English  poor  bore 
no  such  intolerable  burdens  as  the 
poor  of  France  had  to  endure.  There 
was  no  such  insensate  preservation  of 
old  abuses  in  England  as  maddened 
the  unhappy  country  across  the  Chan- 
nel. But  society  was  in  sharp  transi- 
tion in  England;  one  industrial  age 

was  giving  place  to  another,  and  the 
43 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

poor  particularly  were  sadly  at  a  loss 
to  find  their  places  in  the  new.  Work 
was  hard  to  get,  and  the  new  work 
of  pent-up  towns  was  harder  to  under- 
stand and  to  do  than  the  old  familiar 
work  in  the  field  or  in  the  village 
shops.  There  were  sharper  contrasts 
now  than  before  between  rich  and 
poor,  and  the  rich  were  no  longer 
always  settled  neighbors  in  some  coun- 
tryside, but  often  upstart  merchants 
in  the  towns,  innovating  manufacturers 
who  seemed  bent  upon  making  society 
over  to  suit  their  own  interests.  It 
might  have  gone  hard  with  order  and 
government  in  a  nation  so  upset, 
transformed,  distracted,  had  not  the 
hopeful  lessons  of  religion  been  taught 
broadcast  and  the  people  made  to 
feel  that  once  more  pity  and  salva- 
tion had  sought  them  out. 
44 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 
There  is  a  deep  fascination  in  this 
mystery  of  what  one  man  may  do 
to  change  the  face  of  his  age.  John 
Wesley,  we  have  had  reason  to  say, 
planned  no  reform,  premeditated  no 
revivification  of  society;  his  was  simply 
the  work  of  an  efficient  conviction. 
How  far  he  was  himself  a  product  of 
the  century  which  he  revived  it  were 
a  futile  piece  of  metaphysic  to  inquire. 
That  even  his  convictions  were  born 
of  his  age  may  go  without  saying: 
they  are  born  in  us  also  by  a  study 
of  his  age,  and  no  century  listens  to 
a  voice  out  of  another — least  of  all 
out  of  a  century  yet  to  come.  What 
is  important  for  us  is  the  method  and 
cause  of  John  Wesley's  success.  His 
method  was  as  simple  as  the  object 
he  had  in  view.  He  wanted  to  get 

at  men,  and  he  went  directly  to  them, 
45 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

not  so  much  like  a  priest  as  like  a 
fellow  man  standing  in  a  like  need 
with  themselves.  And  the  cause  of 
his  success?  Genius,  no  doubt,  and 
the  gifts  of  a  leader  of  men,  but  also 
something  less  singular,  though  per- 
haps not  less  individual — a  clear  con- 
viction of  revealed  truth  and  of  its 
power  to  save.  Neither  men  nor 
society  can  be  saved  by  opinions; 
nothing  has  power  to  prevail  but  the 
conviction  which  commands,  not  the 
mind  merely,  but  the  will  and  the 
whole  spirit  as  well.  It  is  this,  and 
this  only,  that  makes  one  spirit  the 
master  of  others,  and  no  man  need 
fear  to  use  his  conviction  in  any  age. 
It  will  not  fail  of  its  power.  Its  magic 
has  no  sorcery  of  words,  no  trick  of 
personal  magnetism.  It  concentrates 

personality  as  if  into  a  single  element 
46 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

of   sheer   force,   and   transforms   con- 
duct into  a  life. 

John  Wesley's  place  in  history  is 
the  place  of  the  evangelist  who  is 
also  a  master  of  affairs.  The  evan- 
gelization of  the  world  will  always 
be  the  road  to  fame  and  power,  but 
only  to  those  who  take  it  seeking, 
not  these  things,  but  the  kingdom  of 
God;  and  if  the  evangelist  be  what 
John  Wesley  was,  a  man  poised  in 
spirit,  deeply  conversant  with  the  na- 
tures of  his  fellow-men,  studious  of 
the  truth,  sober  to  think,  prompt  and 
yet  not  rash  to  act,  apt  to  speak 
without  excitement  and  yet  with  a 
keen  power  of  conviction,  he  can  do 
for  another  age  what  John  Wesley 
did  for  the  eighteenth  century.  His 
age  was  singular  in  its  need,  as  he 
was  singular  in  his  gifts  and  power. 
47 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTOKY 

The  eighteenth  century  cried  out  for 
deliverance  and  light,  and  God  had 
prepared  this  man  to  show  again  the 
might  and  the  blessing  of  his  salvation. 


48 


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